


undersell, overcommit

by silentwalrus



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aka Go Hard or Go Harder, Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Chronic Pain, Everybody's Favorite Paranoid Crazy Darling, M/M, Podfic Available, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Philosophy of Steve Rogers, handjobs, massage therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 21:00:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13198470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus
Summary: Steve goes so hard for Bucky that he becomes a licensed, practicing massage therapist.





	undersell, overcommit

**Author's Note:**

> Steve and Bucky do not have a professional relationship in this story. As such, they are not having client/therapist interactions. i’m not cool with professional ethics violations BUT what i am cool with is using your skillz to help your people. Even if you have to deliberately acquire those skillz specifically to help those people. This is that.

 

Bucky has a bad back, and a bad front, and bad legs, and shoulders, and neck, and knees. He also has a bad attitude, which is the nicest way to talk about his raging PTSD and complete inability to let strangers get within five feet of him. A century of being thrown headfirst into mass violence has not left him with an abundance of riches. Muscle adhesions out the wazoo, yes. A set of joints that snap, crackle _and_ pop **,** that too. But overall he’s down an arm, some brain, and the ability to handle anything like a normal goddamn person, so he wouldn’t say that’s really worth some knife tricks and a half-assed gun fetish. A shitty fucking tradeoff all around.

He exercises, which mitigates some of the effects. He does stretches, which does a little more. But some things the body can’t unfuck by itself. Mostly what he ends up doing is living in a constant state of fidget, trying to find ways to stand, sit, lie down, walk and exist that don’t make _something_ flare up and ache for days on end. He does it so much he should get paid for it. It’s practically his stupid fucking job.

“I had a physical therapist at SHIELD,” Steve says eventually, watching Bucky wriggle on the floor like a bug having a slow-motion seizure. “She helped a lot, when I was post-combat or post-injury.”

Bucky grunts as he finally gets that one last stubborn vertebrae to pop. “Me in a little room with a stranger. Fantastic. Oh, and I’m naked, and the stranger is there to touch me. Three guesses how _that’ll_ end.”

He’s not saying anything Steve doesn’t already know, but this time Steve just cocks his head instead of leaving it alone. “What if it wasn’t a stranger?”

Bucky snorts. “No thanks, Rogers. If I want to have an episode I can just go stand in Times Square for thirty seconds. No need to get anyone else involved.”

Steve raises his eyebrows but he does drop it, after that. Bucky knows that massage, in theory, would help a lot. He also knows it’s not fucking feasible. Any stress relief he’s supposed to be getting would run headfirst into the fact that there’s nothing about the situation that _isn’t_ a stressor. Letting someone work on him would just be bad, full stop.

There are stopgaps, workarounds, alternatives. He’s tried plenty. Heating pads don’t work, because he can’t shake the conviction that they’re about to turn scalding and burn him. He takes hot baths like Steve says, but doing it too often is a waste and they’re damn well not the only people in the building who need hot water. He can only take the electric blanket for so long before he gets sick of marinating in his own sweat and abandons it for cooler, better ventilated pastures. And anyway, most of the time he can tune out the pain.

But then Bucky manages to wrench his shoulder _and_ throw out his back, through a combination of flashback, slippery ice conditions and getting startled off a roof by a surprise pigeon. He makes it home by sheer force of will and spends the next three days alternately babied and laughed at by Steve, curled up in bed with the stupid electric blanket balled up against his back and shoulder. He’s not proud.

And then the damage has the audacity to stick around. The stiffness lingers for days, turning into weeks, turning into Steve eyeing him and skimming a hand down his back as he passes Bucky in the kitchen. “You sure you don’t want to see somebody about it?” he offers, in the carefully light voice he uses - has to use - to talk about Bucky’s stupid fucking problems. “We could have Natasha vet somebody. I know Sam gets massages at - ”

“Leave it,” Bucky snaps, harsher than he means to. This whole month it’s felt like it’s been twice as hard to say anything without sounding either furious or completely apathetic. “Just. It’s fine. It’ll go away on its own.”

Steve’s face is all big steady concern, which incidentally makes him look extra punchable. “A massage might help it go faster.”

Bucky has to physically stop himself from baring his teeth. _“Leave_ it, Rogers. It’s not happening, okay?

Steve narrows his eyes. “Hmm,” he says. “Alright.”

Bucky later blames his bad mood and preoccupation with swearing at his own vertebrae for missing the signs. As warnings go, Steve saying _hmm_ in that tone of voice is the equivalent of a blinking red countdown on a suspicious package left in a crowded public terminal.

 

_how to give a massage_

_what kind of massage is best for prosthetic users_

_how to become massage therapist_

_massage therapy schools brooklyn_

_massage therapist license_

 

The stiffness in Bucky’s shoulder and back do fade, or at least as much as they ever do. And Steve doesn’t try to drag him off to some medical suite to get the vicious ground out of him. But then things start getting weird in the Rogers-Barnes household.

For one thing, Steve starts going around with his nose buried in his phone or tablet, where previously he’d pick it up once a day, if that. He starts spending afternoons at the library instead of bringing books home, and doesn’t just go to the Brooklyn one either, hiking all the way out to NYU. “They had the reference I wanted,” he says, to Bucky’s sole questioning look.

All that would be fine on its own, but Steve starts doing other weird shit. The next day Bucky walks in on him juggling eggs in the kitchen at six in the morning. “What,” he says.

“Nothing,” Steve replies without a pause. He’s in his running clothes, sweat stains drying around his chest. “I’m just testing something.”

“How mad I’ll get if you drop one of those on the tile?” Bucky says incredulously. That’s eight eggs he’s got airborne and they don’t fucking grow on trees, especially not at the damn farmer’s market.

“I won’t drop any. I’ve been doing this for half an hour.”

Bucky eyes him with fresh concern. “You sure you didn’t drop _yourself_ this morning? On your head maybe?”

Steve smiles. “Nope.”

Bucky decides it’s too early to do more than dip his toes in whatever fresh waters of insanity Steve is clearly treading. “If you break any you clean it up. And buy more.”

“Of course.”

“And make me an omelet,” Bucky says, collecting a mug of hot water, sugar and teabag before shuffling back out of the kitchen.

The strangeness continues, even if Bucky doesn’t catch Steve in any more episodes of food hurling. Bucky long ago decided that spying on Steve’s activities is a short road into a deep well of bullshit, so he’s not reading his texts or search history or tailing him around town. If he wants to know what Steve is up to he has to ask. He’s not going to ask. Steve is entitled to his goddamn business.

But there’s nothing stopping Bucky from _noticing,_ even if in hindsight, he should have noticed a hell of a lot more. At the time it’s just Steve going out of the apartment more and crawling into bed behind Bucky talking about shit that makes no sense.

“I need a GED,” Steve mutters, taking his usual fifteen fucking minutes to get settled under the covers. “Because I don’t have a high school diploma, and if I did, it’d read _graduated summa cum barely in 1934_ and probably look like I dug it up outta the ground besides. So I’m taking the GED.”

Bucky’s nine tenths of the way to sleep, but he still manages, “Whadda hell for?”

“I’m going to school,” Steve murmurs, kissing Bucky’s shoulder as he elbows his pillow into submission. “College, I mean. There’s some classes I want to take.”

“Cl’sses?”

“Professional training.”

“Y’r already pr’fessional,” Bucky mumbles, but doesn’t get to tell Steve what he’s a professional of before he slips under.

So he doesn’t realize what the hell Steve’s done until he sees the New York College School of Massage Therapy envelope with their mail on the kitchen table, containing a _tuition bill_ for _Steven Rogers._

The thing is, he should have known something like this was coming, because you can’t put a problem in front of Steve and not expect him to solve it. Bucky’s… everything... is nothing if not a problem. And Steve gets ideas sometimes, and usually they run their course with minimum interference with the earth’s normal rotation. Bucky happily ignores those. The key word in there, however, is _usually,_ with notable exceptions being _Injustice Must Be Tirelessly Eradicated With My Tangerine-Sized Fists, Bucky I Am Going To Enlist,_ and _Fuck SHIELD One Thousand Percent Completely._ The critical bit is being able to tell the difference.

Clearly Bucky has lost the knack.

There are also very few opportunities to get Steve to switch course, when he gets like this. By now Bucky has missed all of them. Now the rubber has met the road, and it’s all fucking over bar the fireworks.

By the time Steve comes home, Bucky has passed through all stages of known human emotion and arrived back where he started, namely disbelief and incredulity. He ambushes Steve by the front door before he’s even got his boots off, waving the paper in his face. “Are you serious?”

Steve scans the paper, frowning, before his face abruptly smooths out. “Yep,” he says, unwrapping his scarf. “I better pay that, class starts next week.”

“You’re _going to massage school.”_

“I am. You got me thinking about it, and I started reading up about this stuff,” Steve says, looking at Bucky as he toes his boots off. “And it all started sounding really interesting. And I thought, well, I have all this money sitting around, and I’m not doing all that much with myself, and - they have a massage therapist come by the VA sometimes, did you know that? And I’m not like Sam, you know I’m no good with talking. But this - the body is something I can do. And this way I can do something that helps people, but still has flexible hours and doesn’t involve gunfire or throwing aliens through a wall.”

It’s an excellent speech. The tone, delivery, the eye contact, it’s all flawlessly done. You could really buy what Steve is selling, if you hadn’t known him since you were god damn six years old. “I don’t believe a word out of your fucking mouth,” Bucky tells him.

But Steve is prepared for this. He smiles serenely. “You don’t have to.”

Bucky points a finger at him. “I’m fucking onto you.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I’m not gonna have anything to do with this.”

“Suit yourself, Buck,” Steve says easily, hanging up his coat and moving past Bucky in the hallway, and the problem with having known Steve since he was six years old is that _he_ also knows how to play _you._ If Steve had gotten defensive and tried to convince Bucky they’d have had a nice big row and Bucky might’ve at least talked him down a couple of notches, but Steve _knows_ that and the bastard doesn’t fight fair. What can Bucky do now without looking a complete and utter asshole?

He stomps after Steve into the kitchen. Fine. If Steve wants to do this, why the hell not. It’s his own time and money. It’s too much to hope that Steve will get bored, because boredom isn’t enough to stop Steve, but maybe he’ll develop an allergy to - to whatever they use in massage. Candles, or - something. Hot towels. Maybe a miracle will happen and he’ll realize how pointless this whole thing is.

Unsurprisingly, Steve takes to it with expansively cheerful enthusiasm. Classes start, and Steve smacks a kiss onto some part of Bucky’s sleep-creased face every time he leaves for a morning class and returns rosy-cheeked and smiling when he comes back from an evening one. Anatomy textbooks proliferate around the apartment. Steve has an eidetic memory, but he seems to take a perverse joy in filling out every worksheet and making every color-coded flashcard. Bucky can’t escape awareness through osmosis and ends up knowing stupid random facts like the definition of aromatherapy, and what the hell shiatsu means, and that Steve has to take something called an emblecks.

“The MBLex?” Steve says. “Not in New York, actually. We’ve got our own certification exam.” He smiles at Bucky across the couch. “You looking this stuff up?”

 _“No,”_ Bucky says, pushing up off the couch and going to do more important things somewhere else.

This whole scheme of Steve’s never really goes… away, but it does retreat a little from the foreground. They don’t talk about it, but the fact that Steve’s in massage school slowly permeates the apartment. Candles and bottles of oils spawn on every available surface. Books with titles like _East vs West: A Comprehensive Examination of Regional Modalities in Contemporary Massage Practice & Holistic Medicine _materialize on their nightstand. Steve starts looking at shoe brands with the words 'clog' in them.

Bucky only ever sees a set of Steve’s scrubs once. They’re in a package, on the kitchen table, and it takes him a second to even realize what they are given they’re black and folded up inside plastic. He almost touches them before his hand jerks back. Then he stands there for a while. He didn’t think about it, how Steve would wear scrubs. It makes sense. It’s a medical profession, after all, technically.

He walks back out of the kitchen and he’s never said anything and Steve never says anything and he wasn’t even _home_ that day, but Bucky never sees the scrubs again, packaged or otherwise.

He never sees Steve wearing anything but his own normal clothes. Steve never comes home smelling of hospitals or disinfectant or metal - instead, he comes smelling of beeswax, and laundry detergent, and the damn massage oils. His anatomy worksheets have more in common with technicolor cartoon stills than medical drawings.

And he starts making friends. Bucky starts hearing about classmate Camilla, and Irene, and Julio, and then starts being taken to dinner with them. Camilla and Irene are married, sickeningly in love, and pursuing a career together in spreading healing, holistic wellness and patchouli oil. Julio has extremely intense opinions on politics, art, and fashion, the first two of which get him Steve and the last gets him Bucky, even if torture wouldn't get him to admit it.

He still runs background on all of them, of course. Friendship is great and all but it’s no substitute for good solid intelligence work.

And Steve doesn’t forget his old friends either. If Sam and Natasha thought they’d escape the blast radius of the latest Rogers crusade they were sorely mistaken. And because Steve is Steve they all take his lure, coming to their apartment, believing they’re coming along willingly. Bucky’s there the day Steve starts in on Natasha, the two of them coming in one afternoon while Bucky’s reading.

The door opens on their conversation, their voices going abruptly from muffled to crystal clear. “Remember Tuya?” Steve is saying.

“The massage therapist?” Natasha says.

“Yeah, exactly. She did really good work. I felt kinda bad about her having to do all this stuff for me, but - we got to talking, during some of the sessions, and she said she really liked it. She was a STRIKE agent for a while, did you know?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah. But she got tired of it. And so she left and got her degree, her certification, and SHIELD rehired her as a therapist because she already signed all the NDAs and had the clearance to work on - well, you and me. And she said she really liked it. She said it was really good, to help people like that. And now, I started taking classes, and - she was right. It helps.”

“Makes sense,” Natasha allows. “Are you going to take on clients?”

“Yeah. So I need to make sure I’m not pressing too hard.” They enter the kitchen, Steve waving hello at where Bucky’s wedged into the beanbag in the corner with an Asimov paperback. “It should be fine, since I’m not ripping off doorknobs and cracking eggs everywhere, but I want to make sure. I need to be able to tell what’s too much.”

Natasha sits down at their kitchen table to pry her boots off, undoing the laces. “So now you need practice dummies.”

“If that’s what you want to call yourself, I can’t stop you.”

“Hah.” Natasha glances at Bucky, raising an eyebrow. _“Are_ you pressing too hard? What’d grumpy cat say?”

“Nothing,” Bucky mutters, not lowering the paperback from his face. “Grumpy cat is not participating.” He hadn’t so much accepted the nickname as immediately identified any resistance as futile.

“Aww, kitty. I thought you liked having Steve’s hands all over you.”

“I don’t need to get massage involved for that,” Bucky retorts.

“But massage makes it so much more fun.”

“I’m happy for you,” Bucky says acidly, pointedly turning a page. Natasha laughs, hopping up from the chair to stand with her hands on her hips. “Where do you want me?”

“I haven’t got a table yet so I figured the spare bedroom,” Steve says. “You okay with that? I just put fresh sheets down. I mean, you’ll be lying on a towel anyway, but, yeah.”

“Lead the way,” Natasha says expansively, and they troop off towards the second bedroom, aka the room Bucky never slept in anyway.

Bucky waits until the door clicks shut before flipping back the page he turned and actually reading it. He can still hear them through the walls. Steve is saying _undress to your level of comfort_ and Natasha laughs and says something that includes the words _seen me naked, Rogers_ and Steve laughs too, saying _is there anywhere you don’t want me to touch?_ And Natasha’s voice becomes a low hum then, indistinct even to Bucky’s hearing, and he shakes himself and gets back to actually reading his book.

It’s very quiet in the spare bedroom for the next hour. They’re _talking:_ Bucky can hear the buzz of their voices, and the occasional chuckle or giggle, but it’s all low, relaxed. He wonders if it’s dark in there. All their windows have blackout curtains, but maybe they’d prefer to be in sunlight.

They’re really laughing a lot.

Bucky forcibly redirects his attention back to his book. He knows he’s not a fun person. Whatever he was like before, he’s a sour bastard now, and he can’t seem to turn it off. He’s aggressive, and reticent, and paranoid to the nth degree. A grumpy fucking _something,_ and he knows he’d be a hell of a lot worse if Steve didn’t find his catastrophe of a personality some sad flavor of charming.

Then again, Steve’s always been certifiable, and a bitter pill himself when he’s not doing that freakish thing where he gets all smiley at his people. Hell, he relishes it. Steve would probably suck lemons if he thought it’d add to his bitterness. How lucky for him that Bucky turned out to be the biggest lemon of all.

Natasha exits the bedroom first, looking warm and comfortably rumpled around the edges. Steve comes after, looking equally pleased. Bucky buries his nose in his book and resolutely ignores the way Natasha and Steve both twinkle in his direction.

It’s only the opening salvo. It takes Bucky forty minutes into watching John McClane yippe-ki-yaying motherfuckers one evening before he realizes his right hand has been feeling weirdly good for a while. He looks down. Steve’s eyes and attention are on the screen but he’s also kneading at Bucky’s palm with repetitive, purposeful motions, rubbing his hand and gently stretching the fingers.

Bucky narrows his eyes at it. When he gave Steve his hand to hold he didn’t know it was going to be used against him.

It doesn’t stop there. Steve’s campaign is relentless. He starts ambushing Bucky outright. If he passes out on the couch with his boots on, he wakes up with his bare feet in Steve’s lap, getting worked over while Steve watches some movie on mute with every sign of total absorption. He’ll pick up Bucky’s hand at every opportunity, kneading it with an absent-mindedness so genuine it can only be manufactured by a professional. Steve is a master of exploiting weaknesses, and here, Bucky’s defenses are weak. He can’t just shake Steve off. He doesn’t - want to.

 _Damn_ Steve for being good at what he does.

Steve graduates in May. He doesn’t go to the ceremony so all that happens is the two of them go out for a nice steak dinner. The next day they drive a couple hours upstate on Steve’s motorcycle, then traipse into the woods on one of the mulch-laid day hike trails of the mountain park. They eat the sandwiches Bucky packed on an overlook with a view of the Hudson, all the trees and green and everything just starting to poke out leaves and flower, and then Bucky has to bite the leather jacket over his forearm for twenty minutes after Steve convinces him that sex in the woods is a fantastic idea.

 _Steve_ spends the whole time whispering in his ear about how good it is, how he wants Bucky to fuck him, how he wants Bucky all the time, spread open and turned on and eaten out, so Bucky totters back to the bike beet red with enough twigs in his hair to build a robin’s nest. Steve spends the whole ride home pink-cheeked and humming, the vibrations of it obvious with Bucky’s face pressed against his back. Bucky thumps him on the leg a couple times whenever he senses the smugness reaching unbearable levels, and Steve’s damn well going to pick every twig out of his hair, but it’s good. Steve has been well and truly congratulated.

Two weeks later his diploma comes - to their actual apartment, because Steve agrees to send packages to the decoy address but doesn’t bother with normal mail - and then his license exam test scores. When Steve opens it he laughs, a little disbelievingly, and says, “Well, now I’ve got no excuse not to work,” showing his diploma to Bucky. The exam score he tacks onto the fridge with their sole magnet. Bucky manages to give Steve a fumbling hug - which Steve turns into a proper one, getting their arms lined up and Bucky’s head on his shoulder - and goes to photocopy the diploma and stick the original in their hidden safe.

Steve starts looking for a space to host his practice. It’s a lot of flipping through real estate listings, and while Bucky extracts a promise that Steve will give him a veto on the final options, he’s otherwise not much interested in that. But in some things Steve is about as useful as marzipan body armor, so Bucky’s the one who fills out all the forms and submits everything online and registers _Brooklyn Local Massage Therapy_ as a legitimate taxpaying business.

Steve listens to him rant about municipal tax codes with the smile of a man who knows he doesn’t have to deal with anything he’s hearing about, but then he blows Bucky on the couch and makes good on his threat to spread him open and eat him out, so it’s not like Bucky gets a chance to berate him. He at least manages to tell Steve what he named Steve’s business, even if it comes out a little gaspy. It makes Steve laugh, which doesn’t help Bucky’s gasping situation, but a minute after that neither of them are very concerned about businesses or taxes or names anyway.  

Steve opens his practice in a little ground floor place in DUMBO, between a nail salon and some boutique selling what looks like a grand total of three outfits, all of them one hundred percent guaranteed unwearable. Bucky prowls through before Steve signs the lease, then again after, and again before they paint and again once all the furniture and stuff is set up. Steve picked out the color scheme and all the furniture and even put some art on the walls: they’ve got money to burn. Bucky tied a handkerchief over his hair and spackled and painted and moved couches and shelves and decorative little end tables, and at the end of it all there’s a very sedate set of rooms in rich honeyed browns and golds, with blue flowers in grey stone vases for accent pieces. Bucky now knows the words _accent pieces._ He also knows the place has the best security system in the neighborhood, because that's what _he_ was doing while Steve was comparing eau-de-nil with periwinkle.

It does all look really nice.

And word gets out. Captain America is out of retirement and into touching people with his handsome, handsome hands. And of course he’s offering his services for free to veterans, and of course there’s a whole goddamn media thing about it. Steve even does a couple of interviews, because he wants people to know there’s a free massage clinic in town if you need it. At least he does those outside of the apartment.

Bucky hunkers down and focuses on rewiring their microwave.

Steve hasn’t outright said anything about Bucky getting massaged ever since that fateful _hmm_ all those weeks ago. He’s still getting the hand and foot and occasional neck rubs, but Steve’s never said anything about Bucky coming in as a client.

But Steve really does seem happy. Steve’s good, but even he would have trouble faking interest for this long at this level. Bucky has to concede he’s getting _something_ out of it, even if this whole thing did clearly arise out of Steve’s well-meant if dangerous desire to be the solution to all of Bucky’s problems. Steve may be a supersoldier, but the sheer volume Bucky's sporting would overwhelm him sooner or later.

He still shows up at Steve’s clinic, of course, half because Steve invites him to stop by anytime and half because sometimes being in the same building as Steve is just necessary. At the very beginning Bucky set up the printer and the front desk computer and all the crap on there, but that was before the clinic opened and now he doesn’t go out front at all. Nobody needs to know he’s back here.

And for the first two weeks Steve did all his own scheduling stuff, but then necessity meant he hired Julio’s nineteen year old cousin to be his receptionist. She wears the kind of makeup that puts Bucky in mind of Christmas ornaments, but she keeps excellent records and knows how to work the phone. Martina is polite and seems unfazed by TV cameras and edgy soldiers alike, probably as a matter of teenage pride, so to Bucky that’s worth the way everything she touches develops a coating of glitter. She nods at Bucky every time she discovers him in the laundry closet, which also qualifies as the back office by way of the filing cabinet, folding chair and rickety card table in the corner.

Bucky sits in there sometimes doing sudoku while running some of the loads of Steve’s endless laundry. None of the clients ever see him. He hears them, sometimes, especially if they’ve got the distinctive steps of someone with a prosthetic - either lighter on one side than the other, or with the faint mechanical sounds of machinery as they walk. Those aren’t like his. Very few choose osseointegration, to start with, so all their hardware is detachable, and normal prosthetics aren’t armored or otherwise designed for combat.

Amputation probably causes a pretty similar set of physical problems, though.

Overall, Steve’s practice isn’t really that… bad. Steve’s fallen headfirst into aromatherapy and exists in a constant state of laundry besides, so everything either smells like detergent or some damn fruity candle or another. It has three exits courtesy of access to the building stairwell’s fire door, and the closet office door locks. The only significant downside is the people.

Steve doesn’t wear scrubs at his practice. He’s got several sets of matching blue shirts and pants that sort of look like a uniform, but the quality of the fabric means he looks more like he’s wearing sports clothes. He wears his dumb blue sneakers and sometimes forgets to gel his hair. Bucky’s secretly glad. He’s not worried about Steve’s vets, but there’s plenty of idiots queuing up to get the supersoldier experience. Martina’s not shy about showing the door to every moron who only circles the glutes on “areas to focus on” on their intake sheets, at least.

And Bucky can help him with the other stuff. One evening Steve’s sitting at the kitchen table, pencil tapping against his teeth. When Bucky walks past he has to do a double take, because those are numbers on the paper and Steve has never willingly done math in his life. He treats each number like an enemy who’s personally wronged him. “The hell’s that?” Bucky demands.

“Work stuff,” Steve says, and sighs. “And I must’ve misfigured somewhere in here because the end numbers don’t add up.”

“Show me,” Bucky demands.

Steve slides him the book. Bucky scans the numbers, scribbled out in Steve’s cramped, wandery handwriting. “Rogers, these are your - this is your _accounting_ and you’re doing it in ballpoint in the back of your sketchbook? Give me that pen. Where the hell’s your tablet?”

Steve brings him the tablet. Bucky spends the next fifteen minutes haranguing him while banging numbers into a spreadsheet, and Steve nods and says “Yeah,” and “Sure, Buck,” and props his chin on his hand and smiles insufferably from across the table.

Bucky can’t let this deter him. “Your price list is miserable. You’re running a business,” he lectures. “Yeah, your soldiers come in free, but all those other people don’t. Everybody coming in to get their bums rubbed by Captain America better pay through the nose for it. And these fucking _candles_ cost a fortune, and the _laundry_ you do, and I don’t - I don’t even want to know what a salt lamp is.”

“It’s a lightbulb inside a big chunk of salt. It’s pretty.”

“I _said_ I don’t want to _know,”_ Bucky says, stabbing a finger down at the sketchbook. “What the hell’s this item and why’s it cost a thousand six hundred goddamn dollars?”

Steve squints. “That’s… oh, that’s the heated table.”

“God in heaven,” Bucky says. “Heated _table?”_

“Yep. I’m gonna get one for us, too.”

_“Why.”_

“Because they’re swell,” Steve says blandly. “And when Sam or Natasha comes over for practice I want them to be comfortable.”

“Jesus god damn christ.”

The table arrives in a big cardboard box. Bucky signs for it, drags it inside and takes it out through the back, where a rental pickup truck is waiting. It’s a thirty minute drive home from the shabby industrial garage Bucky uses as a decoy address and package dropoff point, but traffic is good and the weather’s nice enough that he keeps the window rolled down as he meanders back and forth through north Brooklyn for a bit, shaking off any potential tails.

He slits the cardboard once he’s got it in the apartment and squints at the sheet of assembly instructions that drifts out. It doesn’t take that long to set up, but Bucky spends the whole day on it, checking over every piece and investigating the electronics.

It’s not a complicated mechanism. It’s got heating coils like a goddamn toaster, but they’re buried under a layer of padding and then another of thick fabric. The whole thing plugs into the wall and gets turned on and up and off with a dinky little remote control. It’s all exactly what it looks like. This Bucky knows for sure. He’d better, given he just took the whole damn thing apart and put it back together again.

It takes a little while for the table to warm up fully, but when it does it’s not even that hot. With the nubbly feel of the fabric covering it really just feels like a giant piece of hot toast.

Bucky checks the time. Steve’s not due home for another three hours. He looks sidelong at the table again.

He snorts awake to the clatter of keys in the lock. His moment of disorientation lasts way too fucking long and hits way too hard besides, because when Steve enters the room it’s to Bucky falling off the table like a sack of cement. Steve winces automatically and goes to help him up, but by the time they’re on their feet Steve is already grinning. “Good, huh?”

“What,” Bucky tries, trying to detangle himself, but it comes out halfhearted.

Steve won’t let him go, still gripping Bucky’s hand, using it to tug them closer. “It’s a good place for a nap,” he says serenely, like he just found Bucky lazing in a sunbeam. He leans in and kisses Bucky’s temple. “Thanks for setting the table up.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Bucky says, but it sounds pathetic even to himself. They both know who fixes crap around the apartment and it isn’t Steve. And he did just get caught snoozing on the table he’s been bitching about for the better part of a week.

“Course not,” Steve says warmly, kissing Bucky’s temple again. “How’re the temperature controls?”

“It’s got a stupid little remote,” Bucky complains automatically, letting Steve slide an arm around his waist as he turns to pick it up, and Steve lets him change the subject and explain to him all the table’s failings as a concept and piece of equipment.

Natasha’s out of the country again so she doesn’t get to test the table first, but it’s Sam’s turn anyway. He comes over, says “Woo hoo!” when he sees the table in the middle of the living room and immediately starts taking his shirt off. “I fuckin’ love these things. Steve, you can let me do you this favor _any_ time.”

Bucky stays in his beanbag this time - he’s not sure Sam noticed he’s there, actually, given its spot in their corner beside their potted ficus - and moodily watches Steve and Sam joke their way through working on the spot under Sam’s right shoulder that always gets fucked up. There’s no less laughter than there is with Natasha’s sessions, and this time there isn’t even a closed door between all of it and Bucky.

Massage releases endorphins, which also boosts serotonin and dopamine production. It improves circulation and helps bring down cortisol and stress hormones. Consistent massage sessions can reduce trigger sources for anxiety, hostility, tension, and depression. It promotes bonding, and relaxation, and makes you laugh.

“Okay,” Bucky says lowly, that night on the couch with some documentary about seaweed playing on the television. “You can practice. On me. Too.”

Steve looks at him, but Bucky refuses to turn away from the screen. This backfires when Steve swoops in and loudly kisses him on the ear. “Agh!”

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve says earnestly, tipping them sideways and trying to jam his face into Bucky’s neck despite Bucky’s best efforts. “You know how much I value your support - this really means a lot to me - ”

“Fuck off!”

“I’m so glad you’ve decided to support my dream,” Steve croons, to which the only response is to bite whatever piece of Steve he can reach.

They don’t get to it for another week, which Bucky decides to believe is his choice and not just Steve knowing he needs time to sit and let everything tick over in the background. Either way, it means Bucky grunts assent when after dinner Steve tips his head at the toaster table.

“Lie down, however’s comfortable,” Steve says, taking his shirt off as they walk over to it. “You know the settings, right? Set it up how you want it.”

Bucky hesitates, watching Steve strip his socks off too. “I thought I was the one taking my clothes off.”

“You don’t have to,” Steve says, going over to the table and plugging it in. “I can do it over your clothes if you want, or just put my hands under.” He takes the remote out of its little pocket on the table’s side and hands it to Bucky. “Whatever you want.”

Bucky turns the remote over, looking at it, then clicks the table on and pushes it back in Steve’s hands. “Don’t I get a blanket?” he asks, tugging his shirt off and folding it for the couch.

“Yeah, good idea,” Steve says, jogging off in the direction of their linen closet.

Bucky looks at the table, then down at himself. He takes his socks off, folding them up on his shirt. He leaves his pants on, matching Steve, and clambers onto the table. He stalls out for a bit trying to figure out how to lie down, but eventually just drops on his front and puts his chin on his folded arms. There’s no way in hell he’s getting anywhere near the face donut.

Steve comes padding back, draping one of their flannel sheets over Bucky’s legs. “Anything I should focus on?” he asks, putting one of his oil bottles next to Bucky’s head. “Anywhere you want me to avoid?”

“I don’t care,” Bucky says, replacing his chin with his forehead on his arms instead. “Just do - whatever.”

“Okay,” Steve says equably. “I’m going to do your lower back, then, and your neck and your legs some. If anything pinches or feels strange or doesn’t feel good, you tell me, okay? Even if it’s really minor. I need to know so I don’t accidentally squish a client.”

Bucky grunts assent, his eyes already closed, then startles right out of the gate as Steve lifts his hair off his neck. “Sorry,” Steve murmurs, stroking it back and gathering it up into a tail. Bucky grunts again, settling, and sticks his hand up so Steve can pull off a hair tie.

Steve knows how to make a decent bun now that doesn’t tug, so he doesn’t have to do anything else. There’s the click of a cap, and the _schlick-schlick_ sound of Steve rubbing the oil all over his hands. It’s the kind that doesn’t really smell like anything. Then his hands are on Bucky’s shoulders, sliding down.

You have sex with this guy, Bucky has to remind himself. He touches you all the time. This is _normal._ Besides, if he was gonna try anything it was gonna be then, with his dick in your ass. Man up.

It’s - anticlimactic, but probably only because Steve is working to make it so. Steve strokes over him in slow, broad motions, his palms flat, the calluses smoothed by oil. Bucky can feel that he’s not going very deep, leaving the buried knots and aches alone in favor of warming up the surface; working out those kinks will hurt, Bucky knows. It’s probably why Steve’s not going there now. Bucky hates it, that Steve has to be so careful with him, take baby steps, but he’s not delusional enough to believe that fighting it will bring anything but grief. He knows if it hurts now he’ll tense up and not unclench until it’s all fucking over, with a long fucking time before a repeat session, if any. Sometimes baby steps is what you fucking get.

And he can’t complain about it all feeling good, anyway.

At some point Steve slows down and stops eventually, his hands coming to rest on either side of Bucky’s hips. “Wanna turn over?” he asks, tapping with two fingers, so Bucky lumbers onto elbows and knees and collapses back down facing upwards. He doesn’t really want to straighten his legs out and ends up just lying there with his feet flat and his knees up, but Steve doesn’t complain, just moves up behind Bucky’s head to work on his neck some more. This time that means he sort of cradles Bucky’s skull and wedges his hands under Bucky’s back and then drags his palms up, pressing in gently as he goes. Bucky closes his eyes.

After a while certain signals begin to make themselves more and more obvious. He starts to realize that all this has unforeseen consequences, and they are happening to him, right now, in his pants. What Bucky’s body knows is that if Steve’s touching him like this then they must be headed for orgasms and has instructed his dick to get with the program accordingly. He flushes and shifts, feeling himself start to chub up.

Steve, unfortunately by now a connoisseur of Bucky’s fidgets, laughs under his breath and doesn’t stop his rubbing. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss Bucky under the ear. “That’s the opposite of a problem. You can have the handjob now or later, if you want.”

“Now,” Bucky mutters, clamping down on the urge to shift again, because the faster they get rid of his woody the sooner he can stop squirming on this stupid table.

“Okay,” Steve says, but he takes his time about it, moving from Bucky’s neck to his chest. He strokes down and then back up and then back down again with his palms until he’s rubbing Bucky’s hips, moving in, over his pelvis. His hands are easy with oil, warmed and smoothed but not slick enough to eliminate friction, and he’s still bent over Bucky’s head which means when Bucky opens his eyes Steve’s abs are right there, inches from his face.

He’s trying to figure out if he should give in to the urge to stick his tongue out and try to lick Steve’s bellybutton when Steve finally slips his hands into his underwear, fondling leisurely at his dick. Bucky automatically fumbles his hand off the table and gropes around until he finds Steve’s sweatpants, where Steve is hard too.

Bucky gets embarrassingly wet for Steve, and the only consolation is that Steve gives it right back, which means Bucky can blame it on their fucked biology or at least take refuge in the fact that Steve gets just as hot for it as he does. He gets his hand around Steve’s cock and feels the slickness immediately, which, on the upside, is damn handy when neither of them can be fucked to find some lube.

It practically doubles when he starts tugging, the skin going slippery under his palm. Steve scoots back so he can kiss at Bucky’s face from upside down, laying his arms on Bucky’s chest so he can keep stroking over his dick. “Is this a new sex position?” Bucky mumbles nonsensically, his elbow now sticking out to the side under Steve’s armpit so he can keep hold of Steve’s cock.

Steve shakes all over with laughter, bumping his nose into Bucky’s neck. “Yeah, the upside down reverse cowgirl.”

“I think the ceiling has to be involved, to qualify for… upside down,” Bucky says muzzily, shifting his grip. “And I don’t think we should be doing anything with the word _cowgirl_ in it.”

“We already did,” Steve says, slightly more breathless now. His grip tightens on Bucky’s dick and his other hand slips lower, over his balls, making Bucky’s back arch. “Remember last summer in Stark’s limo? That was you, going cowgirl.”

Bucky goes red even as he growls and bites Steve’s bicep. “That wasn’t cowgirl!”

The edge of Steve’s grin is just visible before he ducks down to kiss Bucky’s jaw again. “What else do you call it when you’re on top riding me?”

“Not anything that’s got the name of a _farm animal_ in it!”

“Okay, okay,” Steve laughs, nuzzling in as apology. “No farm animals. You looked so good, Buck. It was amazing.”

Bucky subsides, even if his lungs don’t want to back down from panting. It _had_ been - pretty okay. “It’s good, too,” he manages. “When you’re - riding me. It’s really - good.”

His face scrunches up even as it makes Steve smile as he bites gently at Bucky's neck. He doesn’t know when Steve got smooth and his own dirty talk was reduced to _this,_ but it’s a fair bet to blame it on the last seventy years where everything else got flipped over. Steve got outgoing, Bucky belongs in a hole - and Bucky doesn’t resent it, Steve’s happiness is long deserved, but he just wishes he could give _that_ right back too. It’s not like Steve needs any help to get going - he’s hot and slippery in Bucky’s hand, heavy over the waistband of the sweatpants - but he knows how good it is when Steve’s running his mouth. He wants Steve to have that.

“I really liked it,” he tries again. “Not the - limo. That was - ah - bad security, and - Stark probably fucked forty people in there already -”

“Well, it is his limo,” Steve allows, because he’s a freak who’ll do things like instigate sex in someone else’s car in the first place.

“So does that make - what we did - better or worse,” Bucky says, because he’s the idiot who’ll get astride that and ride it so hard his head bounces off the ceiling.

“What we lack in quantity we make up for in quality,” Steve says, very seriously, which makes Bucky choke out a laugh and turn his head to try to catch his mouth on Steve’s, stroking harder at his cock.

Steve kisses him hard, or as hard as he can when they’re upside down to each other, which mostly means they end up biting each other’s jaws. It doesn’t slow them down any, and Bucky can feel Steve’s close by the pulse of his dick in his hand. He jerks harder, feeling Steve tense up over him, his core tightening, and Bucky feels him start to come, remembering at the last second to angle Steve’s dick so he’s not jacking him off into his own hair.

Steve gasps a laugh, knowing exactly what he’s doing, and starts twisting his hand over the head of Bucky’s dick. Bucky doesn’t last long after that, curling onto his side as Steve tips him over the edge.

Steve spends some time kissing sloppily at Bucky’s shoulder, but eventually he starts extracting his hand from Bucky’s pants. Bucky blinks sleepily and does some drunken flailing of his own, trying to get Steve’s pants back up.

Steve laughs. “Let me get something to clean this up,” he says, moving away, and Bucky grunts and rubs his face against the nubbly table cover. He vaguely registers Steve coming back and wiping at his hand, but then he starts rubbing at his chest again, and Bucky resettles to lie more comfortably and stops fighting the urge to close his eyes.

He twitches awake to Steve kissing him on the corner of his mouth, leaning over him from the side. “Hey,” he whispers. “Wake up, pal.”

Bucky paws mindlessly at the air until reality starts making sense again and he lands on Steve’s bicep, his forearm propped on the table next to him. His whole face feels like sculpting putty stretched over an animatronic puppet. “Whuh?”

“I’d let you sleep but you’ll wake up sticky tomorrow if you don’t shower,” Steve says. “C’mon.”

“Time’sit?”

“Only nine.”

 _“Three hours?”_ Bucky tries to struggle upright. _“Three fucking hours?”_

“Are you gonna say you don’t need the sleep?” Steve smooths a hand over Bucky’s chest again, incidentally pressing him back down onto the table. “It’s not like I mind.”

_“Three fucking hours!”_

“And now you’re gonna get six more. Sit up slow, I don’t want you ruining all my hard work.”

Bucky is aware, sort of, that he’s having a tantrum over nothing at all, but since that’s never made a difference before why on earth would it start now. He lurches off the table and makes for the shower, hissing _three hours_ under his breath like a broken record and whacking his shoulder on the bathroom doorway when his body catches up to the fact that he’s awake and moving and decides to punish him for it. Steve knows better than to grab Bucky in these situations, but he does take over, eeling past him and getting the shower started.

Bucky stands sullenly under the water as Steve joins him. This is the worst part of it all, this whole stupid thing where he can’t just be happy, or grateful, or react in any normal goddamn way to Steve doing something nice for him. Because it is nice. He can recognize, objectively, that this is a gift to him. It only makes it worse. Steve is walking the line so well, managing Bucky’s bullshit, and it’s not his fault that Bucky’s personality type is now ‘active minefield’ and he only ever reacts to things like an angry fucking dog.  

“I’m sorry,” he says heavily, because that much he can do. “I didn’t - I don’t mean it.”

Steve wraps an arm around him from behind. “You know I don’t mind.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me, Rogers.”

“I mind that you’re unhappy,” Steve says, laying his cheek against the back of Bucky’s head. “That’s what I care about. That’s what’s important.”

“You’re doing something. For me. And I’m just - yelling at you for it.”

“I can take a little yelling,” Steve says, making sure Bucky can feel his smile.

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut. “You shouldn’t have to.”

Steve nudges even closer, tucking his face into Bucky’s neck. “You just keep letting me do it,” he says softly. “And everything else, we’ll work through. It’ll get better. You know it will. It already has. You haven’t even chucked anything at me in a whole year.”

Bucky laughs wetly, shower water getting in his mouth, and lets Steve turn him around for a real kiss.

Steve starts getting him on the table every other night, and Bucky can tell that he’s gradually increasing the pressure, going deeper and targeting areas that he’d left alone before. A couple of moves start leaving Bucky breathless, feeling like the discomfort will just build and build until he can’t take it anymore. But then Steve lets up, like he always lets up, and Bucky can breathe out again, this time with everything looser. He feels his lung capacity increasing. Now nearly half the nights he sleeps like a fucking rock. He’s forced to consider the thought that this massage crap isn’t the _worst_ possible idea Steve’s ever had.

One day he comes home to Steve unfolding a thick mat on their living room floor. “It’s for Thai massage,” he says over his shoulder. “I need more practice. It’s got yoga poses and assisted stretching. I was hoping we could try, if you’re up for it.”

Bucky eyes the setup. The mat is fairly thick, and Steve’s now unfolding a duvet-like blanket to spread on top of it. It’s got a blue paisley border and looks offensively soft.

This must be the other shoe dropping. With that kind of lure going, this Thai massage stuff must be the really painful crap. You’d think a century of captivity and assassining would have made Bucky more resistant to pain, but instead it just made him a giant baby about it. Another one of god’s little jokes, probably.

But Steve wouldn’t do it to him if he didn’t think it would help. And it always does help. Whenever it got uncomfortable on Steve’s table it always eased out into release. Bucky handled all of that. It wasn’t bad at all.

“After dinner,” he says aloud.

“Sure,” Steve agrees, like there wasn’t a huge gap between his question and Bucky’s answer. “There’s pasta and beef empanadas on the counter, if you want some.”

He does want some. Steve joins him a few minutes later, and they eat quietly eat the food Steve brought from the deli. “If you take a hot bath first that’ll warm up the tissues,” Steve suggests, when they’re stacking dishes for the sink. “It’ll help loosen everything up. You go ahead, I’ll finish up here.”

That’s an excellent idea. Bucky returns from the bathroom in briefs and an undershirt, because whatever _yoga poses_ might entail it’ll probably go better without his dick dangling everywhere. Steve gives him two candles to sniff, then lights the one he doesn’t recoil from, and it’s a big candle, so when Steve turns off the lights it makes the whole room go golden and warm.

Bucky lies down on the mat, face down, and Steve kneels down beside him, in his usual sweatpants and nothing else. “I’m gonna start with the usual, but this is gonna be a little more active, okay? Anywhere you don’t want me to touch?”

Bucky grunts in the negative. Steve has managed to find a truly excellent duvet and the texture is occupying all of his attention.

Steve starts the massage. By now it's so familiar it sends Bucky straight into a doze, lulling him halfway to full sleep hardly any time after Steve's started. But he's roused again as Steve slows down five minutes later, pausing his hands on Bucky's shoulders. “This is where it gets a little more intense,” he says, squeezing a little. “Tap if you want to slow down, okay? There’s probably gonna be a bit of a burn, that’s normal, but if it starts to pinch anywhere or hurt sharp, you let me know right away. Alright?”

“‘lright,” Bucky mumbles.

“Alright,” Steve says, and proceeds to wring him out like a fucking washcloth. Multiple things pop as he hauls Bucky’s limbs up, down, sideways, backwards and upside down. At one point he makes Bucky sit up and does something absolutely unspeakable that involves folding up Bucky’s arms behind his head and trying to get his forehead between his equally folded knees. Then Steve stands up and does it all over again, this time fucking sideways.

It’s like being a sock trapped in a washing machine that moonlights as a meat tenderizer. “How’s that?” Steve asks, kneeling on the backs of Bucky’s thighs with his hands cupped around the front of Bucky’s shoulders, leaning back so Bucky’s whole upper body is hauled off the ground. Bucky squeaks like a stepped-on hamster. “Great,” Steve says happily, getting up off Bucky’s thighs only to fold him up even further.

It lasts ten thousand fucking years and it  _just keeps fucking going._ It feels like Steve’s trying to take each individual joint and make it face the other way. Bucky can just lie there and take it, making the occasional mangled noise when Steve gets particularly frisky. He’s not going to _have_ a skeleton when Steve’s done with him.

At some point when all the stars have died and the universe has inverted itself Steve lays him out on his front again, returning to the rubbing that the Bucky of forty minutes ago had foolishly assumed was all that massage entailed. He feels like a puddle with a metal arm in it. And a lot of nerve endings. Steve’s just doing his usual steady strokes again, but it’s like all of Bucky’s skin got a layer taken off. When Steve starts working on his diaphragm the noise that gets forced out of Bucky’s lungs has way more in common with a whimper than he cares to admit. Steve eases up but it’s like the pressure doesn’t fade with him. Bucky’s suddenly fighting to breathe. A wave of fear passes through him, bewildering in its suddenness, turning his skin clammy and making his mouth go dry.

“Stop,” he manages. Steve’s hands disappear. Bucky drags in air shakily, trying to figure out what the hell went wrong. There - isn’t anything. Fucking christ. At least when he usually flips out there’s a fucking _reason._

Steve lies down, folding his arms in front of himself and putting his chin on them. Bucky can feel the warmth of his body radiating all down his side. He’s appalled to find the pressure of tears threatening behind his eyes.

“Breathe,” Steve murmurs. “It’s alright. You want to stand up and walk around?”

Bucky shakes his head. There’s nothing wrong with the warm dark, the golden light of the candle playing on the walls. His body’s just malfunctioning again. He just has to ride it out.

“Bad moment?” Steve asks, which is the nice way of asking if he’s having an episode or trigger or flashback. Bucky shakes his head again. “Was it just really sudden? A really big feeling just came out of nowhere?”

Bucky glances sharply at him, startled. “That’s called emotional release,” Steve says. “It’s okay. It catches a lot of people this way. Remember that day I came home and made you put on Mickey Mouse and hug me for two hours?”

Bucky feels his eyebrows knot up but he nods, cheek against the blanket.

“The instructor demonstrated a stretch on my shoulders, and I thought I was okay, but five minutes later I had to excuse myself to the bathroom,” Steve says. “I sat in there for twenty minutes all messed up, trying to figure out why I felt so goddamn terrible. That's emotional release and it takes everybody differently. Some people bust out laughing, some people cry, some people get really mad. It really depends on what’s bound up in your body. I should have spoken up about it in class, because two weeks later it happened with one of the girls and the instructor explained all of it.”  

“Oh.”

Steve grimaces, mouth pulling down. “Sorry. I should have explained it might happen before we began anything. It’s way more common when there’s trauma involved, but it’s only happened with two of my clients, and since it hadn’t cropped up with you at all so far - ”

“It’s fine,” Bucky croaks.

“Still. I’m sorry. I didn’t give you the information you need - ”

“Rogers,” Bucky interrupts hoarsely. “Fuck off. It’s fine. It happens.”

Steve studies him for a while, brow furrowed. “Want me to put Mickey Mouse on and hug you for two hours?”

Bucky nods gratefully. When Steve kneels up and extends a hand Bucky takes it, and when Steve leads them to the couch he takes the paisley duvet with them.

It’s not the end of the world.

The day after, when Steve comes home Bucky’s already sitting on the table, his ass gently getting toasted by the heating coils. He gives Steve a mulish look, but Steve just puts up his hands and says, “Okay, okay, just let me put my stuff away,” grinning as he heads off to put down his backpack.

Bucky settles into the table on his stomach, getting himself comfortable. He spent all of yesterday feeling surprisingly refreshed, which sure as hell never happens after a normal Bad Moment, and the Thai massage definitely loosened the hell out of his joints. The… emotional release… was not fun, and he’s definitely not dying to do that again, but more and more it’s looking like an anomaly. Steve himself said it wasn’t that common.

Steve comes back, already shirtless, and Bucky stuffs his face into his folded forearms. He’s never going to tell Steve he did right, but the benefits of him working Bucky over all the time are definitely outweighing the drawbacks. There was a problem, and now there isn’t. Steve, in his quintessentially Steve way, has created a solution, and despite the fundamental insanity inherent to his plan it has somehow pulled through. Bucky’s not upset that it _worked,_ but Steve’s belief that he can fix things just by doing the ballsiest most bullheaded thing he can think of should under no circumstances be reinforced.

But that’s a problem for future Bucky. Current Bucky is busy experiencing the fruits of Steve’s insanity.

“This is going to need surgery,” Steve murmurs absently, somewhere above him.

“Wha?”

“Your shoulder blade.” Steve taps it gently. He huffs a little laugh under his breath. “It’s kind of strange, being able to tell. I remember looking at it and first, not seeing anything wrong, then seeing something is wrong, then knowing exactly what’s wrong and what the usual treatment is. It’s neat.”

“That’s what education does to you,” Bucky slurs. Steve huffs another laugh and gets back to kneading at his hips.

“Not getting surgery,” Bucky mumbles, after a while.

“Mm,” Steve says. “Not right now, definitely.”

Bucky’s halfway to lolling off in the warm darkness again, but that makes his eyes snap open. “Steve.”

“What?”

“If you become a surgeon, I’m fucking leaving you.”

“Why would I become a surgeon?” Steve says, _way too fucking mild._

“Steve!”

“Relax, Buck. Med school takes too long. I figured I’d kidnap a doctor and make him live with us for a while instead.”

“Ha fucking ha.” Bucky resettles his head on the table, slightly mollified. “As if that would make me trust him.”

“That’s why med school’s really the best option,” Steve says, sounding so reasonable that it takes Bucky a second to realize what he’s actually saying. “I don’t even have to learn the unimportant parts. I’m sure Stark would loan me an operating room if I asked. How hard can surgery really be?”

_“Steve!”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- I don’t know shit about massage programs etc so this is brought to you by the Five Minutes Of Googling school of fic research and the postgraduate writing program of Just Making Whatever The Hell Up
> 
> \- yes, steve did base his clinic’s color scheme on bucky’s eyes and hair. probably not consciously, though 
> 
> -Title is from… wow, my own brain, for once

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] undersell, overcommit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14342874) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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